Among illness and disappointment, the gifts we anticipate most

By Mark A. Taylor

On this very day exactly two years ago, my wife and I sat in a neurologist’s office awaiting test results. A few weeks earlier she had endured a needle in her back to withdraw a small vial of spinal fluid. Analysis of that sample was enough to confirm what we dreaded to hear.

Evelyn has Alzheimer’s disease.

“I’m very, very disappointed,” she said, her head bowed.

I looked up with quivering voice and offered, “Well, I guess it’s good to know. It’s better not to be in denial.”

Going public

But she and I have decided that trying or pretending to keep such news secret is its own version of denial. She’s pretty. I’m smiling. Facebook pictures show us on vacation, participating in family outings, going to a concert. Everything’s fine, right?

No. No, it’s not. When a second diagnosis came this fall (a brain scan revealed that Evelyn also has Parkinson’s disease), we decided it’s time to go public.

Not to seek sympathy or to get attention, but simply to identify with the sea of heartbreak and disappointment we see in the lives of people close to us everywhere.

We posed for this picture the day after Thanksgiving last month.

Sooner or later all of us come to the place where we can hide our brokenness no longer. For each life, the tides of time conspire to wash away the pretense. We think we’re in control. We think we can go it alone. Eventually, each of us must admit that God is our only refuge and strength and the helping hands of those close by are not only welcome but necessary.

Good news

And so we’re taking the step of sharing our news in this year’s Christmas letter. I know, not exactly the cheery greeting we expect among the good news and smiling faces those annual dispatches usually contain.

But if good news isn’t for hard times, too, how good can it really be? An excerpt from that letter in the mail this week explains what I’m trying to say:

We’re not in denial. This is tough. But like the frightened teenager 2,000 years ago giving birth surrounded by circumstances she neither wanted nor anticipated, we are learning some things: Just because life is hard doesn’t mean it can’t also be good. Even in pain, there can be peace. Along with grief, it’s possible to experience gladness. And with each loss, we gain new appreciation for God’s gifts old and new. . . .

Before she gave birth to Jesus, that pregnant teenager praised the Lord with a promise we’re claiming today: “His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50).

Best gifts

We see that mercy in our lives in dozens of different ways. Now that our situation is out of the shadows, perhaps I’ll share some of them in this space. But fear is an apt word included in Mary’s song of praise, and ours. We can no better understand God’s will than she did. We can no more accurately imagine our future days than she knew hers.

And so we’re praying for wisdom to discern each new step and peace along the path. As we receive them, we know they’re gifts enough as we celebrate Christmas again this year. We could wish no better for every reader of this blog.

Photo by Lisa Sweeney Taylor

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